Alcohol shouldn't come back into football stands, and this week the people who actually go to games said so without anyone needing to guess.
A YouGov survey of 6,091 adults who have been to matches found that 64% of match-going fans want the ban kept and only 26% want it lifted. Among regular match-goers it barely moves: 63% to 35% in favour of leaving it alone. Asked what drinking in the stands would do to a matchday, 53% said it would make the experience worse. Only 20% thought it would make it better. That's about as settled as public opinion gets.
So who reopened this argument? Prime Minister Andy Burnham, a lifelong Everton supporter and season ticket holder, floated the idea of a trial while speaking in New York earlier in the week. It traces back to a day out at Hill Dickinson Stadium, where he watched Leigh Leopards beat Warrington Wolves alongside Liverpool city region mayor Steve Rotheram, both of them pictured with pints. His line: "How come these lads can do that in my seat here when we can't do that at an Everton home game?"
He framed it as a matter of principle, calling the current law "discrimination" and saying "I don't see how it can be fair that some supporters of one sport can be treated differently." Government sources say he was simply restating a long-held personal opinion. There's no bill, no trial being planned. He used football's biggest platform to relitigate a pub argument, and fans spent a week correcting him with numbers he apparently didn't have.
The fairness point is real. Under the Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc.) Act 1985, fans across the top five tiers of men's football can buy a drink but can't sip it in sight of the pitch, and no other sport is treated this way. It's inconsistent. But matching rugby doesn't make football's case for it. Copying that setup would just import a new problem instead of fixing the old one.
The smartest version of the other side is the middle path: pre-bought drinks only, sales before kickoff, spill-proof containers. It hands stewards a job they can't police in a packed away end, and it invites exactly the thing fans keep bringing up: standing in a crowd and getting a lager thrown down your back when a goal goes in. The people who live that experience already told you, 53% of them, that they don't want it.
One thing the anti-lift camp should drop: the police reaching for tragedy. The UK Football Policing Unit invoked the Taylor Report and past disasters, and the Football Supporters' Association was right to shut that down, because alcohol wasn't responsible for the deaths at Hillsborough. The living fans already made this case, and they've spoken. The EFL says it would be receptive to a review, and the women's game has already gone the other way, with the WSL and WSL2 confirming stand drinking after a trial. That's their call. It doesn't change what the men's supporters just said.
Burnham asked one question. The fans gave him a straight answer. He should have the decency to hear it.
